Time to Move These Ag Department Jobs Out West

"Go west young man, haven't you been told?" That's a line from a great Toby Keith song. Maybe it's also a line that will soon be told to employees at the US Department of Agriculture.

It was great to catch up with former acting Bureau of Land Management Director William Perry Pendley. He served in President Trump's first term. One of the great things Team Trump did back then was move a bunch of federal employees out of Washington, D.C. and out to the West. It worked. So why not do more of that?

Pendley drafted a recent op-ed for the Washington Examiner: Move federal workers out West

He joined us on our statewide radio show, Montana Talks with Aaron Flint.

President Trump: "I was tasked with the responsibility of taking the BLM headquarters out to Colorado. As President Trump said, people who manage the lands in the great American West ought to live in the great American West, and that was our thinking too. 99% of the Bureau of Land management's 245 million acres is in the 11 western states and Alaska, but the top decision makers were all in Washington."

In his op-ed, Pendley wrote about how the US Department of Agriculture is now planning to shut down their "mammoth" Washington, D.C. headquarters and relocate hubs and workers across the US.

Perry Pendley: "The largest agency in the USDA is the US Forest Service. At 35,000 employees, they manage 193 million acres of forest. 80% of that is in the 11 western states and Alaska. So let's get the Forest Service out here."

Here's our full chat with former Acting BLM Director Perry Pendley can be found in the 2nd half of the below podcast.